Twitter launches paid local weather service “Tomorrow”
Finally we’ll soon see some of Twitter’s previously announced upcoming features in action. The first that will benefit from all the new creator products from Twitter is a local weather service called “Tomorrow”, created in partnership with veteran climate journalist and meteorologist Eric Holthaus. It will be using things like paid newsletters, ticketed live audio rooms, and other services that Twitter will eventually be able to offer. It’s now available across 16 cities in North America and membership will start out at $10 per month.
Tomorrow involves 19 local meteorologists who will create both free content as well as content exclusively available for members. The team also has around 30 climate writers and four part-time editorial writers. The service is now available in 16 cities across North America: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, San Antonio, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington DC, and the Dominican Republic.
For now, as per Axios, members will be able to access newsletters and long form content on the newsletter platform Revue that Twitter acquired. Users can request information but for now it’s only through email. Eventually, they will be able to do so with the Revue website but they’re still continuing to make changes and improvements on the site. The local weather news service will also have short-form content for users like Ticketed Spaces and eventually, audience Q&A services.
Apparently, some of the largest spikes in conversation on Twitter is about to the weather and other related “severe events” like hurricanes, floods, and fires. That is why a weather channel on Twitter “makes perfect sense” according to Twitter’s VP of product Mike Park. Holthaus supports this by saying that his Twitter following increased during Hurricane Sandy as he was explaining weather information through plain language and people appreciated that.
Membership for Tomorrow will start out at $10 per month and according to Holthaus, they expect to be available in most of the 50 major media markets in North America by the end of the year and expand to India and Brazil by 2022.
